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Kelvin MacKenzie…The Truth

Warning! This article has some content, language and descriptions that some might find upsetting or disturbing.

The name Kelvin MacKenzie alone generates emotions amongst Liverpool people and fans that are extremely difficult to translate into print, purely because of his inexcusable behaviour he has delivered to the people of Liverpool.

For those readers who are unaware of Kelvin MacKenzie and his connection with the City of Liverpool and the football club all will be explained in this article.

In April 1989 Liverpool Football Club and its people changed forever, the Hillsborough disaster claimed 96 Liverpool supporters lives and left a city devastated to this day.

MacKenzie was the editor of The Sun newspaper at the time of the disaster and was solely responsible for the publishing of the front page headline called “The Truth” which listed three sub headings

Some Fans Picked Pockets of Victims

Some Fans Urinated on the Brave Cops

Some Fans Beat Up PC Giving Kiss Of Life

The accompanying article claimed that ticketless and drunken Liverpool fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen and stwerads outside the ground.

More specific allegations were made by MacKenzie, he claimed that during the disaster itself Liverpool fans who had escaped the crush and managed to get onto the pitch area had stolen wallets and other items from the dead, and that they had urinated over policemen and the bodies of dead fans and had beaten policemen, ambulance men and rescue workers attempting to save the lives of other fans.

But one of the most single dispicable allagation from MacKenzie was a claim the Liverpool fans had abused a body of a dead girl after shouting “throw her up and we’ll fuck her” to policemen moving her dead body away.

MacKenzie claimed the sources for these allegations were stated to be anonymous high-ranking police officers from Sheffield Police and Irvine Patnick, who at the time was a Conservative MP from Sheffield who wasn’t even at the game.

The coverage and the allegations caused intense uproar on Merseyside and widespread condemnation from many commentators. The Press Council described the allegations as “lies”.

The official government enquiry into the disaster dismissed the allegation that drunken or violent Liverpool fans had been responsible for the disaster and concluded that inadequate crowd control and errors by the police had been the primary cause of the tragedy.

After the disaster Rupert Murdoch ordered MacKenzie to make an apology, MacKenzie when on BBC radio 4 and said “It was my decision and my decision alone to do that front page in that way and I made a rather serious error”.

MacKenzie appeared before a House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee and told them “I regret Hillsborough. It was a fundamental mistake. The mistake was I believed what an MP said. It was a Tory MP. If he had not said it and the chief superintendent (David Duckenfield) had not agreed with it, we would not have gone with it”.

MacKenzie would discuss Hillsborough again in 1996 on BBC radio 4 but this time saying “ The Sun did not accuse anybody of anything. We were the vehicle for others”.

As a result of The Sun’s coverage of Hillsborough the paper is still virtually unsellable in most of Merseyside costing News International millions of pounds per year.

MacKenzie would reignite raw wounds in Merseyside by commenting at a after-dinner speech to Mincoffs Solicitors LLP in November 2006, he told guests “All I did wrong there was tell the truth. There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. The only thing different we did was put it under the headline “The Truth”. I went on The World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now because we told the truth”.

In January 2007 MacKenzie appeared on BBC TV’s Question Time programme, held in Kent. Towards the end of the program, MacKenzie was asked by presenter David Dimbleby about The Sun’s claims about the Hillsborough disaster. MacKenzie stated that he stands by his allegation that ticket-less fans were the cause of the disaster but that he does not know whether the other allegations about theft from the dead and fans urinating over victims and policemen were true. Clare Short MP suggested MacKenzie should apologise to the bereaved families and survivors who say that his claims cause them distress and hurt but he refused, claiming that it would make no difference anyway due to the bad blood between himself and Liverpool Football Club.

MacKenzie suggested that those who feel angry at him should instead direct their anger towards “someone who caused the disaster”. MacKenzie was heckled by some members of the audience while Short was applauded when she repeated her suggestion that he should retract his claims and apologise, but MacKenzie remained adamant that he had nothing to apologise for.

Just so readers can grasp the type of creature Kelvin MacKenzie is here is a quote made by him in the early 80s on the subject of how he perceived his target audience and how he approached the profession of journalism.“You just don’t understand the readers, do you, eh? He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn’t want to hear about that stuff (serious news).

MacKenzie’s lies are still believed by some people who don’t know the truth about Hillsborough or have not been educated by people who know what really happen.

But there are people who MacKenzie can never mislead, the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) who are the torch holders of hope, a beacon of justice and the forefront of everything that’s decent about the City of Liverpool and its supporters. Then you have the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC) a fantastic group of people who’s only quest is to secure justice for the 96 fans who never returned home and to educate those who don’t know the real truth about Hillsborough. Combined with the incredible Members of Parliament who spoke so emotionally in the Houses of Parliament for justice and full disclosure you have a force that MacKenzie cannot even begin to understand.

Kelvin MacKenzie could never have anticipated the backlash his lies would have on the people of Liverpool and what he never expected was a togetherness that would last 22 years, it doesn’t matter if your a Red or a Blue it doesn’t matter if you live in Huyton or Honolulu it doesn’t matter if you were there or not we are all Liverpool and we stand together as one.

Kelvin MacKenzie will never be able to break us or mislead us with lies in the same way he did others and we will not stop until he is made accountable for his lies.

Everyone needs to boycott all his TV & radio shows which including Sky press preview ITV’s This Morning and BBC Radio also The Daily Mail who incredibly still let him write.

I Brian Reece accuse Kelvin MacKenzie of being a racist, a liar and falsification of the truth, if am wrong Kelvin MacKenzie I challenge you to sue me.

COMMENTS

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18 thoughts on “Kelvin MacKenzie…The Truth”

how about starting up a petition to force itv to drop him. we can tell them we will get unto their sponsors & that we will boycott them if itv continue to employ this fool. then we move unto the next of his employers, then maybe he can end up affording a poxy council house

Mackenzie wouldnt know THE TRUTH if it bit him on the arse, I wouldnt buy any newspaper from news international, I have signed the e petition for the scource of his lies to be revealed. The REAL TRUTH will come out. I hope Mackenzie rots in hell. JFT96 Y.N.W.A.

Excellent article , i was 14 at the time and it was a terrible terrible time . My family would never have bought the Sun even before their disgusting slurs and i dont know anybody who buys it here in Liverpool .
I knew from others about some of the things that where said but having never read it at the time and now reading these outrageous lies it has made me feel sick .
What a vile horrible little liar that man is and not a shred of remorse .
I make it my business to tell local young people about the Sun if they happen to be reading it in the cafe where i work and this article will mean i re-double my efforts .

Great article Brian. The more the real truth is posted the more people will realise what this liar is about. We only want the truth, nothing more, nothing less. Lord Justice Taylors report said what was to blame. Now all we want is the truth, and that includes why the inquest never heard anything after 15:15 and why the reaction of the emergency services was never questioned. It’s not much to ask in a country where free speech and freedom of information is supposed to be our right.

Great article, Brian! I will say, though, that I’ve never seen any compelling evidence of him being a racist – he’s exploited the opinions of his readership, evidently, but that doesn’t make him a racist. That makes him an opportunist.

I have never bought the Sun and support the Justice for the 96 campaign. However if “The Truth” story really did come about by believing a Tory MP and it then being backed up by a high ranking Police Officer, is it really the editors fault?
Kelvin Mackenzie is a horrible maggot and since “The Truth” story was published has behaved in a disgusting manner but prior to all that he was editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the UK and was well respected in the media world. Should he have done more investigation to find out if a Tory MP and a high ranking Police Officer were telling lies? We are back in 1989 when the Tories where untouchable and the Police where held in a much better light than they are today. Nothing can excuse his behaviour and comments since then but if what he said is true then shouldn’t we be hounding the Tory MP Irvine Patnick and the Police Officer David Duckenfield?

What did happen to the officer who was meant to be in control, David Duckenfield? I know he was pensioned off early but where is he now?
As for the Tory MP, I wouldn’t expect anything less than lies from one of Thatcher’s spawns..

Thank you Brian, the truth needs to be heard,i signed the e-petition as the truth needs to be heard by the families, its just not fair that this slur is still tainting their memories of ordinary decent people let alone our club , but the football family will stand together. let alone LFC fans, this idiot is a slur towards human nature, anyone who viewed this at the time had a really sick feeling, anyone who read this in the press at the time still feels sick but in disgust – i don’t know the answer to prevent this idiot continuing with his dis-respect but i believe in karma and your time will come

It does need a concerted campaign to get rid of this useless piece of crap. It needs somebody like “Spirit of Shankly” to organise it. If they can get rid of the Cowboys from Anfield they are obviously able to use their expertise to bombard the media and ITV in particular to jettison this piece of excrement. The american banks soon dropped H & G when they found a thousand emails clogging up their mailbox EVERY DAY !
Unfortunately I do not know anybody from this organisation.

Brilliant article mate. There is a spoof ‘the truth’ picture of the scum admitting they r lying bastards on facebook and I asked a bitter blue nose if he would buy the paper if they made that apology. Even he said ‘would I shite they are scum!’

How that man sleeps at night I do not know. A friend of mine died at Hillsborough and I have had to defend his name on many occasions to ignorant idiotic morons who to this day believe the lies this man put into print. Last year was the first time I went to Sheffield to lay some flowers at the ground and even on that day I was ‘confronted’ by a man u ( not from Sheffield) fan who told me to ‘get over it’ I won’t tell you What I replied but I will let you guess. The JFT96 and the Hillsborough families have fought a dignified but strong battle and I’m proud of them for not giving up. I don’t see us as moaning scousers … I see us as a family who all stood together to make sure our family got answers. And finally after 22 years I’m hoping those answers are near